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Animation Quality: 9/10 - I think this show, despite not having a lot of movement in it, exceeded expetations for this style of show as far as the quality and fluid look of the animation. It could have easily gotten away with lower-quality animation, but KyoAni went above and beyond with this one. The color scheme of the entire show is bright, fun, and cute, which fits the show's feel and style perfectly. I have nothing bad to say about the animation except that sometimes the conversation scenes streched out with looped mouth-flap animation and could look boring and lost my interest occasionally.

Characters: 7/10 - Most of the main characteres in this show are undeniably steryotypes and do limit the show somewhat with the sort of predictable reactions (this is one reason that Kagamin wasn't my favorite) and stylized voices and such. But Lucky Star isn't trying to hide this, so the cliche-ness of it works out well in the end. It's not irritating like so many other cookie-cutter moe or tsundere character-centric anime. And Konata is such a unique and fun person to watch that she shines out above all of the rest ~ ! She brings up the score a lot.

Voice Actors: 10/10 - I thought the voice actors and actresses each defined their character perfectly, which has made it even harder to transfer to the English dub because of how much the Japanese version has stuck with me. Konata and Kagami's voices definetly stand out in my mind as the best, allthough Shiraishi, Akira, and of course Misao are also very memorable.

Script: 9/10 - I loved the humor of this show. It was laid-back, clever, subtle, and at times, did a good job of appealing to hard-core fans and otaku and made Lucky Star more enduring to me. They did tend to repeat the same types of jokes sometimes, but it was not overdone and only served as a motif that you could enjoy more than one time.

Emotional Involvement: 5/10 - This is one aspect of the show that was pretty much ignored with a few exceptions - the Izumi family scenes, showing Kanata and her husband's relationship and her watching over them, the concert scene where Kagami gives Konata her seat because she can't see well (although, I think that was a reference to something else anyway...), and when Kagami gets the "love" note in her bag. Those few times were done very very well, but there were so few that I think it's an exaggeration to call this a prominant (or even existant) element of Lucky Star.

Overall: 8/10 (I added up all of the scores from above and divided by number of categories, so this isn't a seperate review but a summary of what I said up there).

I hope you enjoyed Phishn37's review of Lucky Star! This is my favorite anime, so I did love it a lot!

I'm not going to continuously ramble about the show, but I do think that it has brought a lot of fond memories to a lot of people. I mean, imagine a good AnimeCon without the Lucky Star Dance? Or the Haruhi Dance, for The Melancholy wouldn't have been created if Lucky Star wasn't there to introduce Haruhi.

Well, since this is NOT an anime-only poll, I rated both the manga and the anime together.

9/10, simply because I don't believe in giving perfect scores, and I had been dying to understand the drama CD, which, apart from Konata (and possibly Miyuki), has a cast so stellar, I can hardly wish for a better cast.

At first, thanks Kyoto again for this amazing work again. I like Lucky Star and can't wait for the OVA. And this is one of my favourite anime ever. So :

Animation Quality: 10/10. Not a lot of movements but a lot of amazing-quilty animation. This is Kyoto.

Characters: 9. Maybe, some of them are stereotypes, but, just try to find some characters like Konata, aha. They are only stereotypes in a common sight, but if you will dig a bit harder, then... Say, isn't Konata reminds yourself a bit ? And some characters are also my favourites like Kagami and Konata.

Voice Actors: 10. Yes, it's a perfect 10. Amazing work.

Script: 10. Amazing, original scenario is coming from 4koma. And this stories are funny enough to enjoy them fully.

Emotional Involvement: 8. Well, this isn't the same level as in Kanon, but the moment, for example, with Izumi family was sad.

And my overall rating (i will not count it like average from script, adaption ratings and so on) will be 9. Real perfect 10 for me, for example, is Kanon and Clanad, if you're interested. I like Lucky Star very much and I'm really waiting for OVA.

Way too many of you are biased. there is NO way this show deserves a 9 or 10.

I also would not be calling this 'slice of life' which most of you seem to be doing. people are abusing that term lately just like the word tsundere. I bet Minoru has something to say about this as well!

I'd rate this series 8/10. It's not as good as Azumanga Daioh, and I'm not even quite sure what it is I actually like about it, but it's still a fairly entertaining series. Though, this and FMP? Fumoffu are also the only KyoAni-shows I've seen that I'd rate lower than 9. (And I believe I've seen them all, except Kanon 2006, which I'm planning on watching as soon as I can find time to get the DVDs.)

Well..... its kind of a "the sometimes comedic daily events in the lives of...". Many people lately shorthand that to "slice of life".

Because of the 4-koma heritage of Lucky*Star, it has a "setup gag, execute, aftermath" skit quality to it. I keep comparing it to the American strip Peanuts because both contain many statements on the "human condition". The anime series injected a lot of extra pop references that muddied those waters though.

So one could say its in the overlapping circles of "slice of life" and just pure "comedy sketch" arenas -- lets face it, genre tagging is over-rated.

No one is asking you to use my rating system but people are required to use common sense while posting.

when you say something like, "I was bored and wanted to skip the first five minutes" and in the next line, "Konata is my perfect girl this show gets a 10!" it does indeed give society the right to question your intellect.

I am not saying this is a bad show, I liked it very much. but the majority of the casual viewers will not understand a single thing thats being discussed making this a very niche anime.

and since I know you are curious, the answer is No. just because a pretty girl is in a video game does not make it a visual novel.

Way too many of you are biased. there is NO way this show deserves a 9 or 10.

I also would not be calling this 'slice of life' which most of you seem to be doing. people are abusing that term lately just like the word tsundere. I bet Minoru has something to say about this as well!

If you're rating a show you like, of course you are going to be biased. You can't give a show a good rating without being biased ~ ! And some people find things they love about certain shows that no one else sees, so if one person hates a show, someone else might see something totally different in it that makes them like it a whole lot.

No one is asking you to use my rating system but people are required to use common sense while posting.

when you say something like, "I was bored and wanted to skip the first five minutes" and in the next line, "Konata is my perfect girl this show gets a 10!" it does indeed give society the right to question your intellect.

I am not saying this is a bad show, I liked it very much. but the majority of the casual viewers will not understand a single thing thats being discussed making this a very niche anime.

and since I know you are curious, the answer is No. just because a pretty girl is in a video game does not make it a visual novel.

I don't know how the bold part applies for me. I don't go berserk in my spending on anime-related stuff, I don't play ero games, but I can understand Konata's feelings on these two. Visual novels? Yeah, the day I start on them is the day I get a DS and understand Japanese.

No one is asking you to use my rating system but people are required to use common sense while posting.

when you say something like, "I was bored and wanted to skip the first five minutes" and in the next line, "Konata is my perfect girl this show gets a 10!" it does indeed give society the right to question your intellect.

I am not saying this is a bad show, I liked it very much. but the majority of the casual viewers will not understand a single thing thats being discussed making this a very niche anime.

and since I know you are curious, the answer is No. just because a pretty girl is in a video game does not make it a visual novel.

It's an anime show about girls. Why should all posters have a complete thesis with sound argument in stunning eloquence prepared for every single posts for such a topic?

It's an anime show about girls. Why should all posters have a complete thesis with sound argument in stunning eloquence prepared for every single posts for such a topic?

I think potatochobit is just annoyed how people gave scores that seem unjustified compared to the rest of their posts and thoughts - it's very true that your reviews become invalid when you hand out 10's simply because you feel exhilarated at the moment. I'll grant that he's being too stingy about it, and there's little anyone could do (that saves them from looking pretentious) to influence the noise vs. content ratio in any given online discussion.

That and this is a poll on a public internet forum with little supervision. If you regard any of the reviews here (or the poll results) seriously, you're crazy.

Way too many of you are biased. there is NO way this show deserves a 9 or 10.

I also would not be calling this 'slice of life' which most of you seem to be doing. people are abusing that term lately just like the word tsundere. I bet Minoru has something to say about this as well!

I agree on the latter and personally the former, but not that people shouldn't have a right to vote 9 or 10 if they want to. Slice of Life is an abused term though I think. There's nothing about Lucky Star that I can really say is at all like life. It's more like an Otaku's fantasy of what life could be like (flat chested girls like Konata sharing their interests, Yuri tension between girls, ultra smart but also hopelessly clutzy girls like Miyuki....and the list goes on) and the funny thing is that if characters like Konata existed in real life then there would be no need for Lucky Star to even exist.

To me Slice of Life is like a vignette of somebody's everyday activities that should hopefully have the effect of allowing us to greater examine our own existence in some way by the end. The movie Ghost World is a pretty good example I think.

Also it doesn't take much for people to grant shows a ten these days. Basically as long as a series hits at least one point with somebody's particular fetish then it's getting a ten......no questions. That's something I desperately try to avoid when I do my reviews. Before I even think about the score I have to look over everything and how it all came together. I have a full length review from my early days of blogging before I refined my style that I only ever posted a link to before, but here it is in full:

Quote:

The Bad:

Overkill Haruhi References:

I felt like screaming, “Look I don’t care that much about Haruhi, stop thinking I do”, at the screen sometimes. This could have been toned down a lot to give more time to Lucky Star.

Some Animation Glitches:

Many minor ones I noticed where lip syncing was off more than normal, the line between objects transitioned awkardly, one of Konata that looked like a photoshop, and one that was actually hilarious where Konata looked like she had a Monoeye like a Zeon Mobile Suit. It just wasn’t at an acceptable level for an animation production of high expectations.

Uninspired Music:

Look I love my Casio too, but I don’t like to play it everyday. A little more variety in BGM would have done a lot for the scenes. And as much as Sailor Fuku was fun the first couple times, but it got annoying after just a few listens. That was THE big vocal song for the series, and not liking it was not a good thing. The Karaoke could also be inconsistant as well, it was supposed to be the characters singing, but sometimes you get the sense that the voice actors were being given priority for certain “Special” songs, and it just killed the goofiness of it to suddenly hear Aya Hirano’s voice instead of Konata giving what sounded more like a Studio produced version of Sorega Ai Deshou, than a goofy little Otaku’s Karaoke house rendition. The Minoru stuff was just weird and I didn’t care to much for it, but he sure as hell was funny and had a great personality. I wouldn’t mind having a drink with the guy.

Lucky Channel:

Man, the joke ran it’s course around the 5th episode and the guests weren’t all that interesting or surprising (I prefer The Daily Show), save for Goto Yuko and her badass bike. I wish that this could have been scrapped during production meetings and that we just could have spent more time with the actual Lucky Star characters. That’s the biggest complaint of all I have. It’s like if I went into a Movie theatre to see something, and suddenly the management decides that the movie trailers that were airing before the movie were going to be counted towards the time you paid for to see the movie, and the Feature Presentation would have to be reedited to compensate for them. It wasn’t cool is what I’m saying

Now The Good:

The Characters:

Who couldn’t honestly say they weren’t amused by the quirky Konata Izumi, her obsession over video games and Japanese Animation, she feels a little close to home, and she’s cute to boot. What about Kagami and her tendency to “fix” the conversation before things got out of hand, her battles of wits with Konata, her Ide Sweatdrop, her love for her sister and all those other things. What about Tsukasa and her overkilled cutesiness (to the point where I think she was a parody of Moe it’s self), and Miyuki and her speeches (index finger up), her tendency to bump into objects, her…..pinkness. And of course there was Yutaka, Minami and them as well who brought up the flat chest brigade and Patty and her misconceptions about what Japanese culture was like. All these characters were extremely simple, but that was what allowed them to be played off one another to tell the 4Koma style jokes. That’s the essence of Lucky Star and it was pulled off very well. Had we seen more of the characters and jokes based on them, and less of some other things this series could have probably scratched the 8/10 barrier for me.

The References To Japanese Pop Culture:

I liked this style of setting. Learning about a culture and/or reinforcing your knowledge about it is NEVER a bad thing. I learned a bit about how the Japanese family and group of friends functions during such important times as dinner, after dinner TV viewing, public outings and more. I also think the show parodied the rather absurd idea that if you are a cute little girl, everywhere you go outside, somebody is going to try to hop out and take a picture of you, or get a good look up or down your Sailor Fuku.
The Frequent Bizareness Of It All:

Lucky Star could be just plain strange sometimes and that’s always a good thing. It wasn’t SD Gundam level strange, but it was enough that it could give me something to talk about to others or make a not of while watching.

And That’s the reason behind my rating. Would I watch it again, probably not, but I’m at least satisfied I gave it a chance. Now what is the final rating people might ask if they made it this far, well here it is at last.

Final Series Rating: Six And A Half Out Of Ten

Are you looking for something more like that from people? From my perspective looking back at it it seems pretty awful. I could have done a lot better.

Also, what's a correct slice of life archetype and how does this show not fit into it?

No one knows how to define slice of life because it's too new a genre, but this is how I see it:

The point of this genre is not that it depicts real life (that would include a crapload of unrelated series). Some genres put the focus on characters, others on plot progression, but slice of life shows put the focus on the setting. Thus, you can have series with sci fi elements (Planetes, ARIA) or supernatural (Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto) that do represent the epytome of slice of life quite well. ARIA, for example, was the perfect example every SoL series had to aspire to until Hal Film Maker's adaptation of Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto hit the air this month, taking that spot... and none of those shows realistically depict day-to-day life (ARIA has sci fi and supernatural elements, Mahou Tsukai is partly supernatural).

Quote:

Because of the 4-koma heritage of Lucky*Star, it has a "setup gag, execute, aftermath" skit quality to it.

Now, Lucky Star, as Vexx puts it, was nothing more than a random collection of gags without too much cohesion to them. However, the 4-koma heritage is not determinant to the outcome, as Azumanga Daioh already proved it--that series managed to turn random 4-koma gags into a cohesive progression that, ultimately, had an important focus on the setting (though it was more focused on the characters, of course). Kyoani, though, did not achieve that... perhaps they didn't want to, or perhaps the source material was too constrictive, who knows. But that's my reason not to consider LS a SoL series. Not once I saw a scene that made me feel at inner peace, relaxing and enjoying the stillness of the setting.

If you want to see what really is a slice of life show taken to the extreme, watch this season's Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto ~ Natsu no Sora. Of course, since it's the extreme depiction of a genre, it will turn a lot of people off--but at least it will help you get an idea of what I consider slice of life to be.

Other good series:

- ARIA is another strong SoL title, though not as extreme as MTnTnK.
- Azumanga Daioh is a classic series, and everyone should watch it, at least for the comedy side.
- Ichigo Mashimaro, besides being one of the best directed comedies ever known to man with possibly the best ensemble seiyuu cast ever to grace an anime production, is also a great example of slice of life mixed with character-interaction based comedy.
- I haven't watched Planetes, but I hear from good sources that its slice of life side is quite strong. And it's sci fi.
- Other drama-based series like Haibane Renmei and Honey & Clover have pretty noticeable slice of life elements, though it's not their focus.

Quote:

It's an anime show about girls. Why should all posters have a complete thesis with sound argument in stunning eloquence prepared for every single posts for such a topic?

I believe that's the point of analyzing art, right? After all, the Sistine Chapel is just a church.

__________________

Place them in a box until a quieter time | Lights down, you up and die.

I believe that's the point of analyzing art, right? After all, the Sistine Chapel is just a church.

Why should all posters have a complete thesis...

If someone wants to write theses on things like Lucky Star or Spongebob Squarepants, I can't say I give a dam. They probably should stick to writing theses on anime instead of the Sistine Chapel, for everyone's sake. But if they feel as though everyone else should do the same, I'm gonna raise eyebrows.

No one is asking you to use my rating system but people are required to use common sense while posting.

when you say something like, "I was bored and wanted to skip the first five minutes" and in the next line, "Konata is my perfect girl this show gets a 10!" it does indeed give society the right to question your intellect.

I am not saying this is a bad show, I liked it very much. but the majority of the casual viewers will not understand a single thing thats being discussed making this a very niche anime.

and since I know you are curious, the answer is No. just because a pretty girl is in a video game does not make it a visual novel.

Oops, for a second there I thought we were on a forum for anime fans.

We're not judging how this series appeals to casual viewers. We're judging it on how it appealed to us. When I judge a series, I do have a rather simplistic view on it. Did it entertain me or not? This one did, immensely so. It was funny, cute, made me happy when I felt down, and had what I found to be very memorable characters. Those are all things that I personally look for in a series, so I will give it a 9/10 if I damn well please. This doesn't mean that my opinion counts any less than yours, or that I am on any lower plane of enlightenment than you are. :P

It means I liked Lucky Star more than you did, and no, that doesn't give "society" a right to question my intellect.

This goes for both English and Japanese versions. EXCELLENT voice acting.

Script: 6

The first five episodes or so are extremely boring, but it gets better as the show goes on. It just takes too long to get going, and most of the minor characters of the show don't get introduced until past half way through the show leaving little room for them. :/

Editing: 7

Basically an animated comic strip. Not that that's a bad thing...

Emotional Involvement: 9

If you think about it, this show wouldn't be worth watching without Konata, but Konata is such a detailed and lovable character that it makes it MORE than worth watching.

I think a lot of people go into this expecting plot and story progression, and they are somewhat dissatisfied with what they find when there is none. Overall it's just a cutesy, funny, casual anime with a lot of references to geek culture. Speaking of which, I don't think I've ever seen so many references to other anime in one series! Even Initial D!

That said, in a lot of ways, Konata sort of makes this anime. But I liked all of the main characters by the end of the series. I'm even thinking about buying a little statuette of Tsukasa, she's awesome!

I thought the voice acting was excellent, and I just really enjoyed the over-emphasized quirkiness of the characters. I also like the chibi-style for the drawing, it just works for this type of anime.

Good stuff: 9/10 for me (I use that rating quite a bit, oh well, my post). It really is a character anime, one of those where you watch it because you love em so much. And who doesn't love that OP, eh?